Out on the Weekend: The Taking of Leisure Mountain, by SIMPARCH

“See the lonely boy, out on the weekend trying to make it pay, can’t relate to joy, he tries to speak and cant begin to say…” - Neil Young. Out on the Weekend. 1972.

"All too often the workday ends only to find more work waiting on you at home; upkeep of the domicile, lawn maintenance, resurfacing the blacktop drive, laundry… the leaky faucet can wait… and it comes hurriedly although exhausted. The threat of leisure time leads the mind to wander and who wants that? This terror twilight of what to do in your leisure time only seems to beget more work to harvest. At least it seemed to be that way where we all grew up, in the midwest."

Out On the Weekend: The Taking of Leisure Mountain was a sculptural installation created from abandoned lawn chairs, a performance and a live radio broadcast. Referring specifically to this most Midwestern of work ethic, Academy Records, SIMPARCH, and Chris Vorhees collaborated on Out on the Weekend: The Taking of Leisure Mountain, a sculptural installation which set the stage for a 35 minute radio broadcast, and a series of drawings that all focused on an examination of symbols of leisure, playtime vs. work time, and identity through labor. Commissioned for the 2007 Depauw University Biennial in Greencastle, Indiana, this readily available icon of nostalgia and leisure served as a building block for the humble “mountain” set within the confines of DePauw’s Richard H. Peeler Art Center.

Source material was collected by each and developed into the sprawling non-linear narrative. Culled from material as diverse as Neil Young’s Rust Never Sleeps, Antonin Artuad’s Theatre And Its Double, Sis Cunningham and Gordon Friesen’s Broadside magazine, Eric Sloane’s Vanishing America, and Georges Batailles Accursed Share, Harun Farocki’s Inextinguishable Fire, the narrative traced the journey of Marlon Brando through the midwest as a strange menacing accumulation of leisure arose from the surrounding fallow fields.

For more information on SIMPARCH visit their website here or read the Wikipedia entry about them.